


art for the sake of art

by martial_quill



Series: clearer than clear water [6]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fun With the Kindi, Mentioned: Seasonal Depression, River Daughters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 11:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17703119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martial_quill/pseuds/martial_quill
Summary: S.A. 597. In the spring, Neniel thinks about Noldorin and Kindi culture, and makes a gift. Written for Valentine’s Day, guest starring Celebrían.





	art for the sake of art

**Author's Note:**

> Quill: "I want to write something about Maglor and Neniel for Valentine's Day."  
> Bunn: "So do it!"
> 
> This was supposed to be fluff. It ended up with me musing about culture clashes again, since the title attitude that strikes me as very Noldorin, but is very shocking to the Kindi. 
> 
> Ah, well. Onwards!

“What are you drawing?” Neniel asked Celebrían, keeping her voice down. They were in the library, and she had no desire to be expelled by the iron-eyed librarian. Celebrían smiled down at the sheet of paper she was working on, not looking up, but her free hand came up and gestured gracefully to the chair adjacent to hers. Neniel sat down in it, and glanced over. Celebrían was working on a sheet of fine paper, but there were several pieces of birch bark next to her. 

Ah. A portrait of an apple tree bursting into blossom. The flowers were so beautifully drawn, and she had captured many of the knots and the grains in the wood of the branches, even though you could only glimpse the wood beneath the flowering.

“It’s beautiful,” Neniel said, truthfully.

“Thank you.” Celebrían smiled again, the charcoal pencil continuing to move over the page with short, fine strokes. Her brow was furrowed with concentration, the same way Tauren’s did when she fell into a project. And yet, Tauren’s work had clear use to it. They always needed to work with wood. Not that Celebrían’s work was useless, of course. The maps were very helpful. It would have been so much harder to calculate the actual time taken to travel that distance without it, and she would have made many more stupid mistakes. And yet, the portrait of the apple tree…

Lovely. It was lovely. It was just not something someone from the Kindi would do. Then again, Celebrían was not Kindi. She was _iathron_ and Noldorin. To her, it was perfectly reasonable to sit down, find a fine sheet of paper, and start sketching a portrait of an apple tree, simply because she wanted to. Even though she was a mapmaker, and not an artist.

 Then again, in Mithlond, and in Tirion before that, you could _be_ an artist – spend all your time working in clay, or stone, or paper – without fearing that your family would lack for something. She had not quite believed Maglor, when he said that both his father and his mother had spent all their time making things, and that Nerdanel had not needed to hunt for the family to be fed.

But it was more than the simple fact that the Noldor _could_ spend their time doing those things. There was something else driving it, something else she didn’t quite understand. A value placed on beauty for its own sake, yes, she understood that. That was half the reason why the Kindi marked the paths to the village with flowers, rather than rope. And yet...

Celebrían looked up at her, setting the pencil down carefully on a resting plate, and laced her fingers together, the charcoal smearing across them. From the look on her face, she'd caught more of Neniel's thought than Neniel had meant to let show. “You’re not planning to scold me on the frivolous use of resources, are you?”

Neniel blinked, and shook her head. “No. Somebody didn't try that, did they?”

Celebrían smiled. “No, I think Mistinda restrained herself from saying anything aloud. But I don’t think that she approves!”

Neniel snorted. “No, probably not. There’s a reason she gravitated to the glassblowers. Mistinda likes to know that she’s making something that will be put to work.”

Celebrían looked at Neniel, silver eyebrows arching in curiosity. “And drawing is useless, is it?”

Blue eyes held a little irritation, but her tone was mild and wryly amused. So Neniel reached over and tapped the sheet of paper gently, in a blank corner, so as not to smudge the charcoal strokes.

“You did not do this because it would be useful,” Neniel said. 

“No, I did not,” Celebrían agreed, a little more thoughtfully. “To translate what you see onto the page is a rather vital skill for making a map, of course. I could argue that it’s good practise. But that’s not why I did it. I drew the apple tree in bloom because it was beautiful.”

Neniel nodded. “We love beautiful things too. We celebrate them in song. We greet the stars. We mark the ways to our village with flowers. But to _make_ something because it is beautiful, and for no other reason, that is very Noldorin.” She had not entirely believed Maglor, when he had explained that strange term, abstract art. But then, the gifts that he had given them that winter solstice…well, some of them had been useful. Tauren’s tool for sanding her work; Helado’s new shoes. But the circlet of feathers he had given to her mother, the carving that he had made for Ráca. Pretty things, lovely things. And totally, absolutely, useless. It had startled Ráca, very much, although Maglor had so obviously wanted them to be pleased that she had hidden it. 

He hadn’t _needed_ to carve a water lily into the face of the pendant that he had given her, either. Nor had he needed to braid his hair into such an intricate pattern. He had done both. And then he had sung so much power and joy, so many memories of beauty and laughter and love into the charm, that she had taken to sleeping with the necklace on in the winters.

At the time, of course, he had not mentioned that the Noldor made jewellery, when they were courting somebody. That had been the cause of quite a few misunderstandings, between the Noldor and the Kindi, in their first few years in Mithlond. Happily resolved now, for the most part, although one of the cases had ended in quite a lot of tears. Still…

Her hand came up to the necklace, and her thumb traced over the grooves of the water-lily there.

 _I’ve never made him anything_.

And she hadn’t visited him, over the winter, either, even though it had been hard on him. It might be time to fix that.

So. What did someone make as a courting gift for Maglor Fëanorion?

* * *

She had not been able to leave before the spring festival, even if she had wanted to. But now, that was done, there were several new couples wandering around Mithlond with very dazed smiles on their faces, she’d won two bottles of nanëni from Mistinda, and she had left Ráca in charge for a week. And now, she ran down through the slopes of the Ered Luin, over fresh new grass, and stubbornly-lingering snowmelt, and pebbly, rocky hills, and Arda sang of the springtime as she ran.

In the end, she reached him early in the morning the day after she left, as the dawn was breaking across the east. She slowed to a jog, and then to a walk, as she heard a familiar soul-song like a hearth-fire, crackling and welcoming. She reached out with a silent greeting to him, brushing against the defences of his mind, erect even in his sleep.

She turned towards the not-sound, and came to the entrance of a little dry cave. Inside, it was lit by four stones that held twists of sunlight inside them, but they were dimmed for sleeping. Maglor’s eyes were open as he dreamed, and were the only other point of light in the cave.

Neniel smiled, but did not go into the cave. Instead, she retreated out onto the dewy hill outside, and sat down on it, leaning her back against a great alder, one that remembered how it had been to feed off the light of the stars. In its branches, a nest of blackbird chicks was cheeping for their breakfast. She spoke to the birds and the tree quietly until the sun had truly risen. Then she reached out and brushed against Maglor’s mind again, and this time he reached back, the drowsiness falling away from his mind like dew sliding off of leaves. A few minutes later, he came out of the cave, his black hair tangled around his shoulders, his cheeks slightly pink, and his clothes askew. He looked a lovely, rumpled mess, and she smiled at him.

“You could have woken me the first time!” Maglor said.

“And I’m pleased to see you as well,” she said, getting up to her feet. “But you need sleep more than I do, at this time of year. And besides, I didn’t fancy going into the cave.” It was not the darkness that was the problem. It was the smallness of the space. It did not bother Maglor, but Maglor would always be more comfortable with stone than she was.

“Mmph.” He pulled her into a hug, resting his chin on the top of her head. She hugged him back, burying her head in his shoulder. He smelled like sweat and the forest, campfire smoke and cooking meat. She’d missed it. His smell, the way he drummed his fingers on his knee when he thought about what words to speak, the way he moved and spoke, the face he made when he was fretting and thought that she wasn’t looking. She’d missed _him_.

“I missed you too,” Maglor said aloud, in response to the thought.

“I’m sorry I didn’t visit.”

“No apologies. How are you feeling now?”

“Much better,” she promised him. “Everybody in Mithlond has been looking after me very well.” To the point where it had honestly been infuriating, actually, but that was the ice. The nature of it was that up was down and down was up, and you had to trust your people, until the winter ended and you could see clearly again. “Elrond, especially. Did you have something to do with that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Longer sentences, now. Perhaps he really was waking up.

“You’re a terrible liar.” She rose onto her toes and pressed a quick kiss to his jaw. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They stood there for a while longer, soaking in each other’s touch. She reached out with her mind once more, and felt him take down several layers of defences and reach back, as they listened to each other’s soul-songs _._ She felt his joy and delight crackling through him, at her presence, at being able to hold her. Whatever he thought about the quality of the gift, he would treasure it for coming from her.

She stepped back, and picked her pack up, opening it and taking out the yellow silk wrapping. “Here. I have something for you.” She set the scrap of cloth in his hand. He unwrapped the folds of silk, and looked down at the bracelets, his eyes going a little wide. The pearls, none larger than than the fingernail of her little finger, glimmered underneath the morning sunlight.

“They’re beautiful! Who gave these to you?”

She shook her head, reached out, and set the bracelets in his palm. The pearls shone again, even brighter against the tan of Maglor’s skin. “Nobody. I made them, and now I’m giving them to you. I can’t work with metal, and I’m no craftsman, but I thought…you made me something, and I wear it every winter. It seemed time to return the gesture.”

His lips parted as he glanced at her, eyebrows bouncing up in sudden startlement. “You _made_ these?”

She nodded, feeling suddenly cold. “I – yes. Do you like them?” How on earth did the Noldor deal with this all the time? Perhaps that was why they were so dramatic? All the stress caused by constantly wanting their creation to be loved.

“Yes, of course I like them. They are beautiful. They're for me?”

“The Noldor make jewellery for lovers, don’t you?” At least, they did in Mithlond. Had the custom been different in Tirion?

“Not just for them,” Maglor said. “For close friends, perhaps, or for family. But…to ask someone to court you, jewellery was traditional. And the families exchange jewels, at a wedding feast.” He ran a finger over the pearls. “You sang into these. What did you sing?”

“Our meeting, our first kiss, you meeting my sisters and my cousins, wandering through the woods together…us. Our story and our memories.” Along with something of the future that she was still not sure of, whether it was foresight or hope. “Why? What do you feel?”

“Golden light. A joy like a spring welling up. Homecoming. I thought you’d sung of Valinor itself…” He let out a laugh that was no less joyous for being soft, and shook his head, his eyes dancing as they met hers. “Neniel Dîneniel, what _have_ you done to me?” He held out his wrists, palms skyward as though offering his hands to her, and she clasped one of the bracelets around his right wrist. “I used to be a perfectly sensible man. Now look at me!”

“You’ve never been sensible in your life,” she retorted, pulling one of his hands up and kissing the palm, before she moved to the next hand, clasping the second bracelet around it. “You’re a Noldo!”

“And Amanyar, to make things worse,” Maglor agreed, his eyes laughing. He leaned in and kissed her, long and deep. “Thank you.”

Her face had gone hot, somewhere between the kiss and his thanks. “You really like them?”

“I do. And now, I have something to wear to remind me of you all the time. _And_ they’re beautiful, too.” He kissed her again, smiling against her mouth. Her hands were trailing down his back, and he was radiating heat through the thin cloth of his shirt, warm, warm, warm as the springtime around them, now that the ice of winter had passed. “We both have something of the other to wear now.”

It was the most impractical gift she’d ever given. But Maglor’s hands were sliding into her hair, and he sounded so utterly _pleased._ Perhaps there was something to the Noldor’s attitude of beauty for its own sake.

**Author's Note:**

> Mistinda is one of the Elves who remembers the famine of Cuiviénen. She is a fisherwoman and then a potter by original training, and now a glassblower. 
> 
> It has occurred to Maglor to mention that arm-rings are more traditional to give as a gift to men, but it seems less than prudent. Also, he is busy melting over the fact that _Neniel made him something._ To the Noldor, it is very kind to get someone a gift, but very, very important and significant to make someone a gift, because they prize the act of craftsmanship; their culture is geared towards innovation and production – of things, of concepts, of words – as being the most valued pursuits of life. There's always a new and beautiful way to do things. 
> 
> The Kindi, on the other hand, are survivors of a famine, and are a society which gathers and hunts. They have much less time to refine their art, which means they are less changeful as a society than Tirion Noldor in particular. (I haven't figured out exactly how Second Age Noldor differ from Tirion Noldor in this. I'll let you guys know when I do.)


End file.
